


keep on all the lights

by downn_in_flames



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Break Up, F/M, Oops, Post-Break Up, also some smut briefly in the middle there, and idk how to put them back together now, and then i accidentally broke things a little too much, anyways yeah be warned that what you're getting yourself into does not have a happy ending, at one point it was supposed to, because why not sink your ship for shits and giggles, no really idk why i did this, sry byeeeee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25253812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downn_in_flames/pseuds/downn_in_flames
Summary: Screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain,it's 2 a.m. and I'm cursing your name
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 15
Kudos: 52





	keep on all the lights

**Author's Note:**

> title from why are we here by machine gun kelly  
> story summary from the way i loved you by taylor swift  
> opening lyrics from sex with my ex by loote + travis barker

__

_hang my heart up for the world just like a piece of modern art_

' _cause it was art the way you fucked me up_

* * *

It's the same thing every time. The same cycle of good decisions and bad ones, both leading to nothing but regret, because even when she tries to do the right thing it crashes and burns anyways. Due to no one's fault but her own, of course.

Something _has_ to be wrong with her. No sane person would keep doing this - willfully throwing out chances for a new start, chances at something good and right, just to fall back into the same old traps and vices as before, knowing full well where they lead. She's an addict - or worse than.

The double gin and tonic clutched in her right hand is only getting stronger the more she sips at it, the alcohol stinging as it goes down. But it's a good sort of pain, the type that staves off the inevitable numbness threatening to consume her as she sits here, reflecting on how it all went wrong once again.

The bloke - Benjy, this one's name was Benjy - had been another one of those picture-perfect guys. He picked her up in his clean Mercedes exactly when he said he would, held the car door open for her and told her she looked beautiful, took her to a lovely rooftop restaurant overlooking the river, asked her questions about herself and listened dutifully to her answers, footed the entire bill himself, and asked permission before he kissed her as he dropped her off at her front door, not asking or expecting anything more of her.

It's the type of first date most girls dream of. The kind that marks the beginning of a forever.

And yet, Lily already knows there won't be a forever for her and Benjy - hell, there won't even be a second date.

It's been like this for months now - she'll go out on a date, the bloke will be a perfect gentleman and treat her exactly how she should want to be treated, and she'll spend the whole night just waiting for it to end. Waiting for it to end so that she can come here, to this half-underground, hole-in-the-wall pub seven blocks up from her flat, and sip on something strong as she attempts to wash away the evening entirely.

It must be some kind of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and somehow expecting that maybe _this time_ will be different.

"What was the guy's name this time?" an all-too-familiar voice asks from behind her, before an all-too-familiar body settles into the barstool beside hers. His mere presence sends a jolt up her spine, drawing her out of her swirling black hole of thoughts more than the liquor ever could.

"Does it matter?"

James shrugs. "Not too much, no."

He raises a hand lazily to flag down the bartender - he's enough of a regular here that the man on the other side of the bar doesn't even need to ask James for his order; he just nods and grabs the bottle of Jameson.

"More or less of a ponce than Bertram?" he asks, swirling the whiskey neat in its glass before taking a long sip.

"Bertram wasn't a ponce. Neither was Benjy."

"And yet you won't be going on another date with either of them." James doesn't phrase it as a question, he phrases it as a fact.

He's right though. He's right, and he knows it, because he's played this game with her all too many times before.

"No, I won't," she agrees, before bringing her glass to her lips again.

They drink in silence - there's not much that needs to be said between the two of them, no words worth exchanging at this point. Most of the words they exchange inevitably escalate to a fight anyways, which is why they usually save the talking for later.

Because unlike the first half of the evening, Lily never has any delusions that the outcome of this half will ever turn out any different. She knows exactly what she's getting into.

James' hand finds a place on her lower back, long fingers slowly dragging over the fabric of her dress, setting off an unmistakable line of sparks under her skin as her breath catches in her throat. It's absurd the way that, after all this time, even his gentle touches affect her like this.

"This is a nice dress," he comments absentmindedly, finishing off the last of his whiskey. She wonders if he recognises it - she wore it with him at one point, the night she met his parents for the first time. "You're a little overdressed for this place though."

"I usually am," she replies, and downs the rest of her drink in one go. She's only had the one drink - the bottle of wine she'd split with her date is long out of her system - so there's not much in her other than a slight buzz, but that's alright. She's never needed alcohol to make bad decisions, especially not this one.

"Let's get out of here then."

It's still not posed as a question - it never _needs_ to be a question - and yet she nods her assent anyways.

He pays his tab - not hers, never hers, she pays up front so that he can't do that - and guides her out of the pub with him, his hand possessively placed on her arse in a way that Benjy or Bertram or any of the others wouldn't dream of doing.

It's raining when they step outside onto the street - neither of them brought an umbrella, so the rain makes quick work of soaking them both.

His apartment building is less than a block from the bar - the reason she makes the seven-block trek from her own place to begin with - but it's a completely different sight from the practically-hidden entrance to the Hog's Head. The apartment building is garishly ornate, a Victorian-looking building updated with a state-of-the-art security system.

The first time she'd been here, she'd been in awe of the decadence of the lobby, staring at the crystal chandeliers and marble counters; now, she hardly gives it a passing glance as she and James head straight for the elevators, and he swipes yet another key card and types in a passcode to gain access to the penthouse.

He kisses her once there in the elevator as they shoot up to the top floor, his hand curling around her waist and holding her close to him, already impatient for the next step of this dance they always find themselves in.

The ding of the elevator is their cue to stumble into the apartment, still attached to one another, kissing even harder now. Lily knows this next part by heart, has the number of steps - forty-one, unless they get tripped up in the hallway, in which case it's forty-three - from his door to his bed memorised. This apartment is as familiar to her as her own.

Hell, it almost _was_ her own.

She threads her fingers through his hair, soaking wet and patterning the hardwood floor beneath them with droplets as she messes with it, and shivers involuntarily. The chill of the rain has settled itself deep in her bones, and there's only so much that the heat of James' kisses can do to remedy that.

"Shower," he mutters against her lips, and they deviate from their well-worn path to his bed, ending up in his expansive master bath instead.

Their clothes come off in a rush - her dress, bra, underwear, his jeans, shirt, boxers - and then they're both in the shower, hot water streaming down on both of them and filling the room with steam.

The warmth of the room starts to melt away the chill in her bones, to thaw out her physical being, and James' touch thaws out the rest of her, making her feel alive again in a way that only he can. Every bit of friction of his skin against hers drives the hollowness in her chest farther and farther away, replacing it with a euphoric, dizzying sort of high.

His lips move to her neck and to her breast, latching on and doing wonderful things with his tongue that have her whimpering, begging him to touch her where she needs him most. She reaches down and wraps her hand around him, stroking him until he groans against her skin, and suddenly he's grabbing her by the shoulders, spinning her around so that her chest is pressed up against the wall. She arches her back into him, and he lines himself up with her entrance.

The noise she makes when he enters her is positively primal.

"Fuck, Lily," he swears, bracing himself against the wall above her head with one hand and tightening his grip on her hip with the other as he finds a rhythm. She's in pure ecstasy, the pleasure and pain so perfectly intermingled that she can't tell where one ends and the other begins, and every time his hips rock into hers the wildfire in her veins burns even brighter.

Time loses all meaning in the heat of it all - it could be seconds or it could be hours later, but eventually the tension building up inside of her snaps, she cries out James' name once more, and it's only because of how tightly he's holding onto her that her knees don't give out on her right then and there.

James follows a few thrusts later, the sound he makes just as animalistic as her own.

They don't move for a few moments, the only sounds in the room from the shower still beating down on them from above and their own nearly-synchronised heavy breathing.

She likes it, the stillness. The brief peaceful moments before she has to think about what it is they're doing here.

He breaks first, pressing soft kisses to the back of her shoulder in all the spots he'd bitten just a few minutes before. She'll almost definitely have bruises there tomorrow, physical evidence of the drug she can't quit, the addiction she can't seem to shake, the tattoo of him permanently borne into her skin.

She turns around to kiss him properly once more, desperate to stave off the inevitable crash.

And it works, for a while. At some point they both get out of the shower, drying off slightly, before repeating the whole process again in his bed.

She rolls off of him when they both finish, her whole body sated and humming with residual pleasure. James' bed is so welcoming and warm that she's got half a mind to just drift off right there, even though she knows fully well why she shouldn't; that's what _he's_ about to do anyways, his eyes already closed with one hand still wrapped around her waist. The room is still faintly lit, illuminated by the bright lights of the city streaming through the wall of windows on his side of the bed.

The light catches on a bit of the silver on a face-down frame on his nightstand, lit up like some sort of sign, calling her to it. She knows what it is though, knows better than to pick it up and flip it over, knows exactly what she'll face if she does.

Her and James, the night they'd gone out to celebrate his Chelsea contract. He's got his arms around her and she's laughing at something he's just said, and they look so very happy and _so very_ in love.

Which is perhaps a bit ironic, considering she can also pinpoint that night as the beginning of the end. The very first big fight.

She's lost count of how many fights have come after. But the first one… for some reason, that first one still replays in her mind like it happened yesterday, like some horrible car crash on repeat that she can't look away from.

" _I'm not going to be one of those footballer girlfriends, that's not who I am! I'm not cut out for that picture-perfect living-off-my-boyfriend's-money Instagram model shit!"_

" _I'm not asking you to be that! I don't_ want _you to be that!"_

" _Then stop trying to push it on me!"_

" _For fuck's sake, Evans, I'm not trying to push anything on you, I'm just saying I'd rather pay for you to have a driver to take you into the city than have you take public transit every day!"_

" _And_ I'm _telling you, I don't want that! I don't want you paying for stupid pointless expenses when I'm perfectly capable of supporting myself!"_

" _I never suggested you weren't! God, just let me do something for you without making it into a big fucking deal for no reason!"_

The ones that came after were never exactly identical to the first, but they almost always came down to the exact same things - Lily's need for independence and James' need to help everyone and constantly throw his money around, especially at her, especially when she didn't want it. And of course, both of their stubbornness and tempers, which meant that every argument inevitably became a screaming match. The two of them have never been able to do anything halfway; their fights were no exception.

She's never been cut out for the spotlight either, never cut out for the way a tabloid would paste a picture of her at Waitrose in sweatpants doing her weekly shop and speculate that her clothing choices were meant to conceal the early stages of a pregnancy, never cut out for the squad of girlfriends and wives of the other players who looked down on her for her 'silly' research job and her inadequate clothes and her inadequate life.

She'd endured all of that at first - because she loved James and he made her happy, and she was able to withstand everything else for him. But as their own relationship started developing cracks… one day, it stopped being worth it anymore.

So she packed up everything of hers that had made its way into this apartment, took it back to hers, and swore that was the end of it.

They were over. A clean break.

And then somehow… they've ended up here instead. Caught in this messy whirlwind of sex and fighting and disaster, because somehow, even when they're at their very worst, at their very lowest, no one else can make her feel like this.

The rest of the world feels like it's blanketed in darkness, void of saturation and light; but with him, she feels bright again, sees things in colour again, even if only for a little while.

He broke her, or maybe she broke herself, but the damage is done and seemingly irreversible. She can't feel anything anymore, unless it's with him.

Half-asleep beside her, he tries to pull her closer, tries to snuggle himself up against her skin, and she pulls back. She's back in reality now, the peaceful bubble where she can pretend like everything between them is fine popped.

As she moves away from him, he reaches out, grabbing her wrist. "Stay with me," he says, his eyes wide open now. "You don't have to leave."

He may make it sound like he's only talking about tonight, but they both know there's so much more to his words and to his request than just one night. There always is.

He wants more from her than she's able to give.

"I do," she replies softly, tugging her hand away. His own hand falls back to the bed, the rejection clearly etched on his features.

They're both masochists in their own way. They both play this little game every time, go through all the steps of this dance, knowing full well that it will always end in pain.

"No, you don't." His voice is harder now, and he sits up in bed.

"Don't tell me what to do," she snaps automatically, looking around for her clothes. Her bra is hooked on a door handle, her left shoe by the closet door.

"You're really going to tell me you're happier like this? Going out on dates with those stupid blokes that you know full well you're not going to like, pretending that it's perfectly normal and healthy to come over here and fuck me as soon as you're done? _This_ is really what you wanted?"

 _No_ , the voice inside her head screams. _This isn't what I want at all_.

Truthfully, she doesn't _know_ what she wants. She knows what she _should_ want, but as she's proven time and time again, the first half of tonight included, she's pretty fucking terrible at convincing herself to want it.

So she doesn't say anything, just grabs her soaking-wet dress off the floor and tries to build up the courage to put on the freezing garment.

"Jesus, Evans, don't put that back on," James says, out of bed now and looking at her condescendingly, like he's reprimanding a child. "I've got clothes you can borrow - surely your pride can stomach _that_."

She wants to turn down his offer for that comment alone, the frustrating implication that she's somehow in the wrong for not wanting to be dependent on anyone or anything, but the reality is that she remembers how cold she was when she had this on before, and she's not in the mood to repeat the experience anytime soon if she doesn't have to.

He reappears a few moments later, wearing a pair of boxers himself and flinging a T-shirt and sweatpants at her. They hit her softly as she catches them, and she can't help but notice that they smell like him.

As she puts them on, she notices that even the shirt he gave her is a vestige of their past - a concert they'd gone to with his friends three years ago. She's not sure if he did that on purpose, gave her something so clearly reminiscent of when they were together, or if it was a complete accident, because nearly everything in their lives is inextricably connected to the other somehow.

For a moment, she entertains letting herself stay here. Letting herself do what James so badly wants her to do - hell, what _she_ so badly wants to do - and falling back into his arms again.

She shakes her head, shaking the idea away with it. The underlying problems of their relationship, the very things that split them apart in the first place, haven't disappeared; for as senseless as this current arrangement between the two of them is, expecting that they could somehow be together again and that all of those problems would just suddenly fade away is an even more foolish fantasy.

She locates her right shoe near the sink and slides it on. Normally she'd be fine to go shoeless at this point, but James' sweatpants pool around her ankles as is, and at least the heels help remedy that to some extent.

When she emerges from the bathroom, James is leaning against the doorframe. He's making no effort to block her way - he'll never force her to stay, never force her to do anything she doesn't want to - but she can't get out without walking past him one more time.

"Lie to me, Evans," he says, his voice low and soft. "Lie to my face and tell me you don't love me anymore."

She stares at him for a moment, in shock, before doing exactly as he says. "I - I don't love you."

It's a lie. It's always been a lie - it was a lie when she said it the day she broke up with him, and it's been a lie every time since. She loves him so much it hurts, so much it threatens to destroy her sometimes, so much that it drives her back to this place every single time, no matter how hard she tries to stay away.

"Good girl. Keep doing that, and maybe one day you'll actually mean it."

She hates how well he knows her, how easily he can see through every single one of her lies.

He moves from the doorway, back into the bedroom, past her. He doesn't say goodbye. She doesn't think she deserves one at this point anyways.

Her feet carry her to the elevator of their own accord, carry her out of the lobby, carry her into an Uber that's waiting to take her home. That had been a fight, at one point, with James insisting that if she had to go home in the middle of the night at least he could call his driver instead of letting her walk seven blocks in the dark by herself, and Lily insisting that she didn't need his help getting home, thank you very much, and the compromise - not achieved without a lot of yelling and cursing - was that she always calls a ride.

Miraculously, she holds herself together for the entire trip, biting the inside of her cheek hard to maintain a grip on herself, the physical pain distracting her from everything swirling around in her mind. The taste of blood fills her mouth at one point - she bit down a tad _too_ hard, perhaps - but it's still better than crumbling to pieces in this stranger's car.

The driver drops her off at her own place, and she only just makes it inside the flat before falling against the door, the tears held at bay for so long finally set free.

It's ugly when she cries like this - big, wracking sobs that shake her whole body as she slides down to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. She feels like they could drown her, like one day the weight of her heartbreak will pull her into its undertow and this time never release her.

She hates herself for this, for never learning from her mistakes, for never being able to walk away. Even when it always comes to this.

It's the same thing every time, and it always leads her right back here.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr!](http://downn-in-flames.tumblr.com/)


End file.
